Love Come to Me by Lisa Kleypas: Discussion and Book Review

In 1988, Lisa Kleypas wrote a hero who pulls a girl out of a frozen river and decides, while she’s still dripping wet, that she belongs to him. That’s Love Come to Me, one of her earliest books, written years before the Wallflowers, the Ravenels and Derek Craven ruined all of us for regular men.

We read it for the Ripped & Ravished Book Club, where we pick up vintage romances with the clinch covers and cracked spines and talk honestly about what still works and what really doesn’t anymore. Becky from Too Stupid to Live joined me again for this one, and I picked it because Lisa Kleypas has her first new release in five years this October. It felt like the right time to go all the way back.

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Listen to the podcast discussion:

The Lisa Kleypas magic was not born yet. ~ Under the Covers

Content warnings: this is an older romance and it comes with forced seduction after marriage, a heroine naive, outdated gender roles and a Civil War backdrop that brushes past slavery.

We’re reading this for the bodice ripper book club as part of a bigger conversation about romance history. Of everything we’ve read this year, it’s the gentlest of those, but read with care, skip what you need to skip, and come share with us in the comments.

What is Love Come to Me by Lisa Kleypas about?

It’s set in Massachusetts a few years after the Civil War. Lucy is a very proper New England girl, engaged to a very proper man. Then she falls through the ice, and the man who pulls her out is Heath, a Southerner who just moved to a northern town after the war. Even with all of that, he decides she is it for him and he’s going to marry her.

Grab Love Come to Me on Amazon

Why we picked this for Ripped & Ravished Book club?

Lisa Kleypas is one of the foundational names in historical romance, and with her new release out this October, it felt fitting to dig way back on her list. Love Come to Me is the early one you can actually find easily. She has two or three books from before that aren’t even on her website anymore.

I have the 1988 paperback, and my original plan was to read that one in case anything changed between editions. But I’m very slow with paperbacks, so we both read the 2011 ebook from the library.

Reading Notes & Discussion

Love Come to Me is a single discussion episode.

Listen / watch here

The first twenty five percent had me. A girl drowning in a frozen lake is a dramatic way to open a book, and at first Heath is more respectful than the heroes we’ve read this year, so I thought, okay, maybe this won’t be one of the tough ones. Then she’s back at her father’s store, he keeps coming in, and it all goes very basic. The pacing lost me and I don’t think I ever recovered.

Becky put it well: every structural piece of a romance is there, but there’s no big reason these two shouldn’t be together. Lucy’s fiancé, Heath’s ex who shows up from the South, the North and South tension after the war. Pick one and make it intense, and instead we get a handful of half reasons that feel like decoration. The fiancé does nothing for the story and when Lucy is caught in a compromising position he’s totally fine with walking away.

Then there’s the miscommunication. They marry, they move to Boston, and they never communicate. I kept waiting for the shoe to drop and the big thing never came. The big reveal at the end doesn’t even come from him. Somebody else tells her and suddenly everything is fine. Nothing changed between them and there was no grovel, so I can’t buy that ending.

We also talked about the forced seduction scene. They’re already married, he forces himself on her as a lesson, and halfway through she’s into it. It’s less graphic than The Flame and the Flower, and I was thankful for that, but I was still uncomfortable.

It’s not all complaints. The individual scenes are good. I felt their chemistry before they were ever together, when he’s in the store and can’t do much because she’s engaged. I love how they goad each other, and their first time together is a good scene. And Heath does something that felt pretty revolutionary next to the other heroes this year: when he crosses a line, he stops and admits it was wrong.

One more thing we couldn’t let go of: why is there always another woman as the villain? The Flame and the Flower has one, this one has one, and once in a while I just want the bad ex to be a guy. Becky wants the ex and the heroine to end up best friends three years later, and honestly, same.

Things we talked about

• Reading early Lisa Kleypas after loving Dreaming of You and her latest book
• The pacing after a dramatic opening
• Why the fiancé and the ex add no real tension
• The Civil War backdrop and what the book glosses over
• The compromised and forced to marry trope then and now
• Lucy’s naivety and virginity as the reason for it
• The miscommunication trope and the ending
• Forced seduction compared to The Flame and the Flower
• The other woman as the villain
• Watching an author grow from her early books to her new release

Discussion questions

If you read along, tell me in the comments or reply to the email:

• Was this your first Lisa Kleypas, or did you come here from her newer books?
• Did the ending work for you?
• Is Heath loving her from the first moment romantic or a little creepy?
• What did you make of Lucy’s father?
• How does this compare to the other picks this year?

Final thoughts: Love Come to Me by Lisa Kleypas Book Review

There was so much potential here. She could already write a really good scene. What she couldn’t do yet was string those scenes together into a story that kept me wanting to pick the book up.

I read an advance copy of her new release right before this one, back to back, and it was a wild experience. The new book is a slow burn full of historical research with a heroine opening the first female bank in London. Love Come to Me leans on you falling for Heath, and Lucy is fleshed out but she’s not who you connect with. The Lisa Kleypas heroines I know are strong, independent and opinionated with real substance, which is exactly what I missed here. If you want to see what I mean, here’s how I ranked her heroines.

Still, you can see the seeds of the Lisa Kleypas hero in Heath, and I appreciated getting a snapshot of her early in her career. It’s a good reminder that you don’t have to have it all figured out at the start.

Who this is great for:
Readers curious about how the modern romance novel evolved. The heroine is allowed to want things in a way the earlier bodice rippers didn’t allow, and the hero is more self aware. If you want to know what romance was like in the 80s without the most triggering scenes, Becky and I both agree this is the one to read.

Who this isn’t for:
Anyone starting their Lisa Kleypas journey. Almost nothing you can buy from her right now reads like this, so start with our Lisa Kleypas reading guide instead and come back to this one once you’ve read everything else.

Final rating: 3 stars

Join the discussion

Did you read Love Come to Me with us? Leave a comment or reply to the email and tell me what you thought. We’re closing out the year with Vivid by Beverly Jenkins, so if you want the reminders and discussion links, sign up for the Ripped & Ravished Book Club newsletter here. You’ll also be the first to hear what we’re reading in 2027.

Want to catch up on the rest of the year? Every pick and discussion is on the bodice ripper book club page, starting with The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. And you can find more of Becky over at Too Stupid to Live on Substack and on Instagram.

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